The batting appears very thin without the stars Sehwag and Gambhir. Chopra, consistent as ever but out of contention for the national team, will be the lynchpin. A lot will depend on the flashy Dhawan and the steady Manhas, but the rest of them don't bring anything substantial. They have Sunit Narwal and Pradeep Sangwan, two seamers who can score a few, but the recent form of the spinner Chetanya Nanda has been a cause for concern.

"Talent is nothing without opportunity"
"You're not remembered for aiming at the target, but hitting it"

Mumbai are currently leading the West Zone table and they're done with the Zone phase. Rohit Sharma is still doing well for his team, and going by stats, he's done well for himself too. He's got a healthy average over 45 and a strike rate over 145. He's got a shout of being the best Indian T20 player now, and dropping him for the scratchy Ravi Jadeja was a capital blooper.

Rohit Sharma did very poorly in international ODIs for 2-3 years. It is only fair that he was dropped. I am a big Rohit Sharma fan and I know he will be back but it was a completely plausible omission.

Rohit Sharma did very poorly in international ODIs for 2-3 years. It is only fair that he was dropped. I am a big Rohit Sharma fan and I know he will be back but it was a completely plausible omission.

That was in T20. I can understand if he's dropped from ODIs due to declining form there, but dropping him from T20s was inexplicable. The replacement wasn't even good.

Sharma's ODI replacement was even worse, and I'm not even talking of Jadeja here. Right now, with fielding being an area of weakness, he should walk into the ODI team. They can use five livewires on the field right now.

Funny how two of the domestic tournaments, one was a One day tournament while other a T20 tournament, have have already being played in the domestic season, and we are still stuck up in the build-up thread!

The premere FC tournament has started today, but no one seems to be interested here either.

Well, I am interested, but not too much to discuss until I find some means of watching the games in the UK.

Good to see Pandey make runs against probably the second strongest bowling line up on show today (second to Mumbai). I do worry to see RP Singh only clinch one wicket though, his bowling (especially his unlimited overs bowling) seems to have gone seriously downhill and he needs to change that if he wants to salvage his international career. Shivastava makes his FC return, which is handy to see - judging by the ICL, he certainly has the height and speed to succeed at international level, but of course, he will need some good performances to be considered. Ranadeb Bose got five wickets today with Ashok Dinda taking 3, but it would seem that although the latter is preferred because of his pace, the selectors are unwilling to consider Bose for that very same primacy given to speed.

The champions have started off well, reducing Punjab to 242/9. With Zaheer, Agarkar, Kulkarni, and Powar, it must be very difficult for teams to amass anything in the region of 400 against them. Zaheer with 3 wickets shows that he is coming back well from injury. The real star of the day was Agarkar, though, who got 4/41 off 22 overs with 10 maidens!

The speed at which a fielding team gets through the innings is overrated.

The champions have started off well, reducing Punjab to 242/9. With Zaheer, Agarkar, Kulkarni, and Powar, it must be very difficult for teams to amass anything in the region of 400 against them. Zaheer with 3 wickets shows that he is coming back well from injury. The real star of the day was Agarkar, though, who got 4/41 off 22 overs with 10 maidens!

Zaheer hasn't been bowling fast regularly, but he's been getting the ball in the right areas, and has been quite steady. After having bowled out in all the T20 matches, he's slowly but steadily getting it back.

Maybe one of the mods can fix that- there's a 24-hour edit rule running here. I had once asked if we can start a new thread for the matches, but the decision has been to stick to one.

Strange, isn't it? The mods prefer to look the threads funny here, rather than fixing the title to say : "Indian domestic season 2009-10" without going into hyperbole.

Not even Cricinfo. They didn't cover live a single match, and only posted end-of-day's-play scores.

They are giving session by session update and it is understandable as none of the matches are telecast and it is extremely tough to cover 7 matches live from seven different venues along with various other international and domestic matches going on.

Besides that, hardly anyone (fans) is interested in the domestic matches. Hence session by session update makes sense and then one gets to read the report of the day's play in the evening.

It always happened like that. Still even the handful of followers did it avidly.

They are giving session by session update and it is understandable as none of the matches are telecast and it is extremely tough to cover 7 matches live from seven different venues along with various other international and domestic matches going on.

Besides that, hardly anyone (fans) is interested in the domestic matches. Hence session by session update makes sense and then one gets to read the report of the day's play in the evening.

It always happened like that. Still even the handful of followers did it avidly.

They usually cover one game live, often involving Mumbai/Delhi/TN/Karnataka. They often rely on Neo telecasts to update their scores, but sometimes, we find that they do live coverage of matches without telecast, without the details in commentary. With Neo running two channels, telecasting a match shouldn't be that difficult, although the decision to take is which one to follow.

They usually cover one game live, often involving Mumbai/Delhi/TN/Karnataka. They often rely on Neo telecasts to update their scores, but sometimes, we find that they do live coverage of matches without telecast, without the details in commentary. With Neo running two channels, telecasting a match shouldn't be that difficult, although the decision to take is which one to follow.

Anything interesting to come out of watching the action? How did Ablish bowl?

Nothing interesting. By the time I started wating, Mumbai had lost 3 wickets, Jaffer, Rahane and Sharma. These were the only three I wanted to watch but they didn't do anything in this match.

Ablish bowled well, typical line and length. I just don't have any idea why the batsmen struggled so much on this track! If it was because of slow and low nature, then wonder how so many medium pacers got success!

An Exciting pace bowling talent has been spotted. Abhimanyu Mithun of Karnataka. This year would see the emergence of this raw pace bowling talent from Karnataka. many close observers of the game in bangalore feel there is a resemblance of srinath in his younger days. Just read this report of the UP v/S karnataka to know why people are raving about his talent.

It was Mithun all the way after UPís chase was dented by new ball bowler R Vinay Kumar, who had opening batsman Shivkanth Shukla (5) edging to Manish Pandey at third slip.

Mithun worked up a goodly pace that worried the home team batsmen and had them playing tentatively. He mixed his deliveries cleverly and
showed that he is a bowler to keep track of. His bouncers had the rival batsmen hopping and ducking.

The UP batsmen found Mithunís pace too hot to handle as he took five wickets on the trot in an excellent show of fast medium bowling that had an impressive control over movement. His bouncers brooked no answers from the home team batsmen as a couple of them took painful
body blows unable to weave or duck out of the line of fire.